


Magic vs Mars

by Karwin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 11:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20620292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karwin/pseuds/Karwin
Summary: Perhaps people of magic were never meant to explore space. But the farthest reaches of the world were too enticing for even a magic based humanity to keep away from forever. It's just a shame that the arcane human's first step... was a clumsy stumbling directly into a war with their alien neighbors.





	1. Chapter 1

In retrospect, the pod probably had been pretty easy to mistake as a bomb. 

We hadn’t been intending to attack Mars, really. We’d been trying to explore space, but the limits of magic make it difficult to know how far we can go and what we need. 

So, assuming that the red planet was a dead, cold rock, we assumed it was safe to fire a magic filled pod drone at it to look around. It was a very basic device, basically just a metal ball full to bursting with magic to fuel it and launched at Mars with enough speed to get it there in less than a week. 

The plan had been for the orb to impact Mars and use the runes carved into it to scan around the planet, teleporting said scans back to Earth. 

Uncomplicated spells, but utilized in a rather extravagant manner; which quite frankly had been something of a common theme for most magical advancements throughout history. It was the artists and creatives who tended towards coming up with entirely new and different ways of magic. 

The mission had been going fine, the orb landing on Mars fine, getting a few scans of cold solid planet… and then of something big, armored, and hairy. 

The people of Mars, unseen until now do to their technology dispersing magical signals fired at the planet, had come to inspect the orb that had just landed on their planet. They stood seven feet high, bodies a mix of chitinous shell and thick, almost armor like wooly fur. 

Their body type was something between gorilla and blackbear, with enough humanoid features in for us to recognize them as sentient life rather than local animals. 

One of the dozy twits tried to crack the pod open, unsure what it was and suspecting it might have something valuable within, and the result was all the magical energy fueling it being jettisoned out like a detonating missile. Everyone within a ten mile radius was blown to ash. 

If those of Mars had been as uncivilized as they looked to us, we may well have been able to play it off, pretend we had nothing to do with it and later on make a less hostile first contact with them. 

Unfortunately, looks be darned, they were a rather smart people, and it didn’t take long for their scientists to figure out where the orb had come from. 

Once they had that worked out, it didn’t take them much longer to realize there was sentient life on Earth, and that it had likely been us who’d just fired a magical bomb at them. 

Assuming it was a sort of pre-emptive shot, a warning for battles to come, the beings of Mars decided to give their own warning shot, firing off a massive, bulky device. 

Unfamiliar with ‘technology’, we were unable to recognize a nuke when we saw it speeding towards us. We knew it was coming and knew where and when it would land. 

But, unable to properly scan it at the speed it was moving, we were left to assume it was some sort of communication device, perhaps even a ship carrying Martians to Earth to speak directly. 

We… were very incorrect, and Australia was blasted clean off the face of the planet. Wasn’t gonna be any sorting things out at that point. 

In perhaps the clumsiest of ways possible, we were at war, martians vs magic.


	2. Chapter 2

Sarid sat nervously in his pod, deeply regretting quite a lot of things. 

He didn't want to be a fighter, but then he supposed not many really did these days. He'd only signed on for the 'good fight' because..well, after hearing that an entire continent had been destroyed, it was difficult to justify that it wasn't his problem. 

The draft had hit every society on the planet. No matter where you were, what your gender, race, faith, or magic type, if you were old enough, you were asked to help. And so Sarid sat in a rune stone pod, launched at nearly light speed. 

He'd arrive in only ten minutes, which was not nearly enough time to mentally prepare for a battle against aliens. His pod mates didn't seem nearly as bothered. 

To his left was a burly man by the name of Duncan. By the looks of him, Sarid could only assume he was an already trained battle mage. To the left of him was a thin woman who Sarid believed was called Raya. 

Despite being the physically smallest in the pod, she somehow let off the darkest aura of any of them. Something about her eyes.. the lack of any expression, positive or negative, for what she was being sent to do. Sarid wasn't sure about her, and hoped he wouldn't have to be going forward. 

And across from Sarid sat Kaiden, the only familiar face on the pod. Sarid didn't know him well, having only spoke to him a few times before the mess on Mars got kicked up. They'd been in school together, both having just barely reached their adult lives before the mass draft. 

He might not have known much about Kaiden, but he knew enough to know that he didn't belong in this pod. He'd trained in frequency magic, and while it wasn't a terribly tricky type of spellcraft to weaponize, he'd certainly not been training to do so. 

Then again, Sarid could say the same for himself. He had no business being in a war. He'd not specialized in any field of magic yet. 

He'd been far too nervous to pick one, and in his attempts to have as many skills as possible, had ended up with a cluster of different spells of different difficulty from different branches of magic, chosen seemingly at random from an outside observer. 

He knew a grand total of one combat spell, and it was the same that all teenagers learned for self defense. 

Sarid rubbed his head gently, trying to clear it. Dwelling on it wouldn't do him any good. He only had a few minutes now, and working himself into a lather in that time wouldn't do any of them any favors. 

He supposed he ought to try and relax his mind and focus his body, as the oh so pleasant soldier who'd packed them into this pod had suggested. How he was meant to do so had been disappointingly omitted. 

“Yer thinkin' too much, can see it on yer face.” Duncan grumbled to Sarid, “Ain't gonna be any help that way.” 

'I know you big oaf.' Sarid thought, though only responded with a nod of his head. When he was down to only give minutes on the clock, he tried to calm himself by focusing on spells that he knew and sorting through which would be useful. 

ĊþąŤīæÐ, defensive charm. Created brief intangibility. ¶§µþ, levitation spell, could lift anything up to one ton given focus and time to cast. œŇŁŐȹ, analysis spell, allowed for all the aspects of a situation to be mentally isolated and process, speeding up the user's thought process. ﮔꭢﬗꟽ, movement spell. ꟿꞶꞳꭔ, temperature charm. FFLﬖꝷꟷ, basic repair charm. ꞀꞢꞂꝒꝿ, breath spell. Ꞃ꞊ꝾꝽ, seporat-*SHUMP*. 

The impact of the pod into the surface of the Martian planet was a lot more violent than Sarid had been expecting. It was blunted heavily by a series of glyphic charms and spells, so Sarid didn't want to know what it would be like to touch down without them. 

The pod began to crack open, letting the cold of the red planet in. All who were sent up to fight had intensive glyphs tattooed onto them to prevent the difference in air and pressure of Mars damaging them, but said glyphs couldn't protect them from anything other than the immediately lethal atmosphere. 

The four of them filed out of the pod, looking around at where they'd landed. Their pod had crashed into the red sand, digging a sizable pit into it, and was within a cluster of several other similar craters from repeated pod impact. Around them was a large square base of stone, built to surround the landing sight. 

“This way!” The call came from one of the corners of the base, where a tall, pale man stood, waving them in. 

The four of them hurried from their pod towards the entrance to the base, Sarid taking note of the engineer mages who hurried out form the nearby corner, surrounding the pod to scavenge and likely repair it. 

“Welcome to Mars,” The pale man said as they entered the base, “It's a frozen hellhole full of monsters, and there's not a good cup of coffee for thirty-four million miles.” 

Sarid shuddered at the mention of the distance, not wanting to let his mind linger on how far from his familiar world he'd been thrown by what was effectively a highly advanced magical shot put. 

“Is it safe to presume you lot are as low on training as the last dozen?” He questioned. 

Duncan opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, the ground beneath their feet shook. Not much mind you, but noticeably, and they could tell from the land of sound that it wasn't another pod from earth. 

“Oh hell,” the pale man groaned, “Looks like we're gonna find out the hard way.” He turned to a short, thin women who was waiting by the nearby wall, “Galia, sound the alarm. Got another attack coming.” 

Sarid felt the cold of Mars pump through his veins as he heard this, not feeling prepared in the slightest.


End file.
